Vanilla Smoke
by Ardwynna Morrigu
Summary: Scent has strong ties to memory. New to war, a young Sephiroth struggles to deal with both.


**Vanilla Smoke**

Three weeks they kept him on the field, the first time. It was only meant to be a trial run. He did what they asked, what he had been trained to do. Then they called him, hauled him back to check his health, his growth, his progress. The chemical tang of refined mako was a relief, as was the smell of bleach, and the astringent wisp of alcohol. He slept well those nights in the lab, in the cot in the back that was getting too small to hold him. Four days of tests. Three nights of blessed sleep. Then they sent him back to the front.

He had a cot there too, in a tent he shared with others. A tent that smelled of the dirt they tracked in, and the socks they didn't wash, of bodies pushed too far and not enough water to wash them clean again. He was not used to the scents of others, or of so much filth, but he would grow used to it, he supposed. This was his purpose now, out here in the war.

It was his eyes that grabbed attention wherever he went, the glow intense, the shade unique, his pupils strange. But he moved by all his senses equally, by the feel of sodden earth beneath him, by the taste of rain in the air, by the scents that soaked their way into hair and fibers. Fruit and flowers all new to him were added to his memory. He catalogued the scents of wet fur and dry, the rank odor of the field at battle's close, and the miasma of blood mixed with earth mixed with bowels that hung over so many newly dead. He took note of all new sensations and filed them away, till they became too familiar.

He learned the scent of a campfire burning, dry pine crackling in cold night air, and it became a rare thing to him, a sensation of comfort. He learned the scent of bacon crisping, and of food burning at the bottom of an abandoned pan. He grew accustomed to the ozone taint in the air after multiple materia flares, and the searing tang of gunpowder. He walked through newly emptied temples and tasted the cedar and sandalwood of incense left smoking thick in the air. He learned the scent of burning and it followed him everywhere.

He did not sleep. He had company in this, the men and boys beside him, nestled one, sometimes two to a sack in the dark, with warm rain drumming on the canvas overhead. Sleep was rare. Good sleep did not exist. Every thunder clap could hide an enemy weapon firing. The watch could be overwhelmed and nobody would know for the sound of rain. The dead rose up from the fields again and haunted what little sleep there was. Men cried out from their dreams, flailing at unseen foes.

Sephiroth snatched what rest he could, but too often fields were nearby, too wet and too red. The towns on the other side were smoke and embers, by his hand, at Shinra's command. The smell drifted over camp, inescapable, of cooking flesh, charred skin falling away in flakes, and eyes and mouths open and screaming, and Sephiroth could not sleep. He took to the trees and the mountains at odd hours and called it reconnaissance. He sought thin air where the crackle of burning timbers could not go, beyond the scent of wood and bone. The air still echoed with screams that had already gone. Even in the cold heights, sleep came slowly and did not stay long.

The besieged were not the only ones who burned. Left and right of him, comrades were shot down, artillery burning through their bellies before they stumbled at the charge. If they lived, they festered, and their screams joined the night chorus that followed him up the mountain.

It was three months before they called him back to the city. He had grown taller already, and lean, though the lab assistants cooed that he still had a trace of softness in his face. His eyes remained as bright and as blank as ever. The first day they took their samples and their measurements. A requisition was made for a larger uniform, or at least one longer in the leg. He scrubbed himself raw in the showers to free himself of the scent of battle. From Hojo's face, he did not succeed, but one never knew with the man whose face was stuck scowling.

Sephiroth tied the strings on his papery hospital robe and lay down in his cold cot, curled up so his feet would not dangle. Eyes closed. Mind slowed. Lights were dimmed and the lab was still. The isopropyl haze was sterile and familiar. There were no voices, no screams.

He smelled smoke. He snapped out of bed and spun around in the dark, seeking the source, some flare or Bunsen left unattended, some fault in the wiring. But there was no electric tang, no hint of ozone, no chemical burn. Only gunpowder smoke and aged wood burning, and the greasy odor of toasted flesh. He could not go far and anyway, it followed him. He sat awake in his cot till morning.

"I didn't sleep," he reported the next day. It was duty. "I smell smoke."

"Rubbish," Hojo said and reached for a syringe. Sephiroth received new sleepwear that day, longer in the leg and closed in the back, to replace what he had outgrown. He ate the bland portions he was given, did as he was told, and scrubbed himself twice as hard with the harshest soap he could find, filling the shower with its artificial scent.

"I didn't sleep," he reported the next day. "I still smell smoke."

"It's not important what you smell," Hojo said, pulling on gloves. Sephiroth scrubbed and washed himself four times that night and still smelled the fire and the ash.

He was given new uniforms to accommodate his new height, and a suit, his first, with a black bowtie. One of the assistants helped him tie it and told him he was going to be a real heartbreaker. He had in fact broken several hearts already, with well-placed blows to the chest and felt their contents spill hot and sticky over him. He had felt the exact moment of their last wounded beat. He wondered why she approved.

He was taken around out of the lab, to one of the President's parties. Crystal clinked and chandeliers sparkled. Eyes wandered up and down him. He was shown off and shown around and everyone watched and marvelled but didn't have much to say to him. Some of them even drifted away. He found himself on a balcony under watch of a Turk not too well hidden in the distance, with a harmless drink in his hand, breathing air that reeked of refined mako. It felt like what he supposed home would feel like.

"The boy smells like gunpowder," the President complained. "I know what teenaged boys are like, but he really needs to pay attention to hygiene."

"Gunpowder, you say?" Hojo leaned in and sniffed all around. Sephiroth bore it, long past considering other options. The President and the Professor discussed his life in front of him and he contemplated how much soap it would take to remove the stain that had sunk into his bones.

"It's in his hair, Doc," said the assistant who had helped with his tie. The ones who had dressed him had noticed it, traced it and pinpointed it. Skin could wash. It even replaced itself in short order. But hair kept going almost as long as you let it, and Sephiroth had let his go very long.

The remedy was simple. He only needed scissors, or a decent knife. But he was not allowed to cut his hair, it seemed. Not anymore. It had made a favorable impression, even if its scent had not. There was image to consider. There was a plan of some sort, but no one told him what.

He was sent back to the front for another month. He almost grew used to the scent of burnt flesh and smoke. Villagers ran screaming with flames on their backs, bare feet turning to blackened coal. He convinced himself for a while that it was only his singed and stained hair he smelled, not boiling innards and fresh burning flesh. He managed to sleep a bit, though his face grew sunken and dark, and his dreams were full of crisp corpses that screamed. The aroma of roast on the campfire mingled with the wisps of charred flesh clinging to his hair. He grew leaner and harder and taller all the same. He marked his deeds by every inch of his hair, memory flooding back with every toss of his head. He learned how to stay very still.

He was called back to Midgar for the Professor to shove a bottle in his hand. "If it were up to me I'd just cut the whole mess off," Hojo said, "but the PR department says the public's being stupid, as usual." Sephiroth stared at the bottle in his hand. There was no label, no name. He opened it and prepared to drink.

"It's not for drinking, you jackass," Hojo shrieked. "Wash your hair with it. We're throwing every damned essential oil we can get in bulk into it, so it better do the job."

He used a dab the first night and slept an hour, a dollop the second night and slept two. Half a bottle and he slept in silence the better part of the night, and nobody complained of an odor when he passed by. Half a bottle was fine, while he was in the labs and fresh fired flesh didn't cloud him every day.

Three quarters would have done the trick at the front, and the supply from the labs was steady. He emptied whole bottles over his head for extra surety and slept like a babe while his men tossed and wept. Towns burned and people died, by his hand, at Shinra's command. Sephiroth silenced the screams under running water and slept in a haze of vanilla and rose.


End file.
